Selecting Green Paint

September 3, 2009 By Green Home Guide Staff

Alex Pennock wrote this article, with contributions by Mary Cordaro,Miriam Landman, and Willem Maas.

A new coat of paint or stain can make a room fresh again, but it often has the opposite effect on the air quality in your home. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), paints, stains, and other architectural coatings produce about 9 percent of the volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from consumer and commercial products, making them the second-largest source of VOC emissions after automobiles.

VOCs are carbon compounds that evaporate at room temperature and react in sunlight to help form ground-level ozone, an integral component of photochemical smog. VOCs can cause respiratory, skin, and eye irritation; headaches; nausea; muscle weakness; and more serious ailments and diseases, according to the EPA. Formaldehyde, a VOC commonly found in paint, is a probable carcinogen. The EPA has found that indoor concentrations of VOCs are regularly up to ten times as high as outdoor concentrations, and can climb up to a thousand times as high as outdoor concentrations when you are applying paint.

This overview covers the environmental and health impacts associated with most types of paint on the market. A good coat of VOC free paint should last years, so your choice is significant for your home, your health, and the environment.